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Monday, February 22, 2016

In 1957 Brooklyn, New York, reclusive
amateur painter Rudolph Abel (Mark
Rylance) is sat in jail accused of being a soviet informant after having
his home raided by the FBI.After
refusing to put up a fight, he awaits his trial and is introduced to successful
law partner James B. Donavon (Tom Hanks),
who has reluctantly taken his case.

The prosecutors, his law-firm partners,
the public and even the judge all want Donavon to lose the case, yet after the
inevitable guilty verdict, his strong belief in fair representation and the
constitution convince him to appeal the conviction and spare Abel the electric
chair.

Meanwhile, Francis Gary Powers an
American pilot is shot down over the Soviet Union during a secret U-2 spy
mission at the same time as an American economics student finds himself on the
wrong side of the newly erected Berlin Wall.Donavon has shrewdly predicted this eventuality and begins to negotiate
a prisoner of war swap between the two super-powers.

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Some time after the end of the Civil
War, John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt
Russell) and his stagecoach driver O.B. are travelling to the town of Red
Rock, Wyoming with Ruth’s latest bounty: the notorious fugitive Daisy Domergue
(Jennifer Jason Leigh). A couple of
fortuitous happenstances and a roaring blizzard quickly ensure that the ride
becomes a lot cosier due to fellow bounty hunter, Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), and supposed new
Red Rock sheriff Chris Mannix (Walton
Goggins) hitching a ride.

The fierce weather prohibits them for
reaching their destination overnight, so they decide to stop at Minnie’s
Haberdashery for respite and warm stew.Yet
already in residence at the small lodge are the enigmatic cowboy Joe Cage (Michael Madsen), elderly Confederate
general Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern)
and the new Red Rock hangman Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth).

What follows is an inevitably
Tarantinoesque pressure cooker of narcissists, paranoiacs and sociopaths having
to spend time in a room together slowly discovering the motivations and
machinations that will build to a bloody climax…

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Nuclear holocausts have been a staple of
discouraging cinema for decades, yet somehow they just seem so… fun.The thought experiment of what would arise
from the ashes of Mutually Assured Destruction has preoccupied filmmakers since
only a few years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and yet the apocalypticaphilia
continues to perpetually reinvent itself.

More of an alternate reality offshoot
than a sequel, Mad Max: Fury Road reinvents
the franchise with Max (Tom Hardy)
being captured by the War Boys – the neo-steam punk army of local tyrant
Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) –
and taken back to The Citadel to be used as a “blood bag” for the sickly driver
Nix (Nicholas Hoult).

Meanwhile, loyal lieutenant Furiosa (Charlize Theron)has re-routed a routinegasoline
mission in the armored War-Rig, into becoming a maverick escape for Joe’s five
specially selected breeding ‘wives’.On
hearing of the betrayal, Joe sends the War Boys – including Max strapped to his
Nux’s car for blood transfusion – after the truck and his prized childbearing
wives.